Monthly Archives: September 2012

Don’t you love nature? If you look carefully, there are gifts all around us. In this case a pattern caused us to stop the car, get out and make a capture. It was a celebration moment that Dewitt Jones speaks about. Nature creating art just for us!

I’m addicted, I admit it. I love Frank Gehry buildings. They are challenging to photograph. They make me think. They are beautiful to look at. As such, here are a few more favorites from a 2nd run at it on our way home from the Utah tour. Click on an image to make it bigger,then you can navigate with the arrows at the bottom right. Let me know how you feel about this instant gallery I created. First time trying it. Oh, by the way. The color comes from colored lights that come on as it gets dark. The lights are constantly changing colors. So much fun to shoot but a challenge with exposure.

Dan and I are considering a tour to Death Valley in late February or early March 2013. This would be a workshop dedicated to B&W with one of our favorite B&W photographers Chuck Kimmerle. I’d be interested in knowing of your interest in such a workshop. We would focus on B&W capture as well as processing. It would be our typical 6 day tour, first day arrival, four shooting days and a final sunrise day before breakfast and departure. Price would be around $1,500.

I’m back from a wonderful trip to Utah with yet another great group of folks. Unfortunately we had some of the wildfire smoke drifting our way creating some haze on the grand landscape scenes. That did not stop us from finding many great detail shots in the gorgeous canyons where the light reflects off of the opposite wall. Today’s image was taken on the first morning of the tour at sunset. Again the haze was smoky, but in this case it allowed for a nice receding ridge shot. Got to make lemonade out of lemons sometimes!

I arrived in Las Vegas a couple of days ago where my tour partner Dan picked me up. We stayed the night before heading to Escalante and Boulder Utah to do our scouting for our tour that starts on Monday.

Being fans of Frank Gehry buildings, Dan and I headed over to the Brain Center in Las Vegas. Not only did we find the Gehry building, we also found a building behind it that we fell in love with too! Here are some images from the evening and morning shoot before heading to Utah. Remember to click on the lead image to make it bigger and then you can scroll through all of the images from there.

I’ll be busy starting tomorrow with the gang, but hope to be able to post a few things over the next week.

Off in the morning for our tour in Utah. Southern Utah is such an image rich area of our country I always look forward to my trips there. We have a great group coming and I’m looking forward to being together with them!

The blog image is from Stud Horse Point in northern Arizona taken back in 2007. Don’t forget to click in the image to make it bigger!

This image was crafted from a single exposure. There was NO “HDR” work done. Well, no HDR software such as Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 or Photomatix or any other tone-mapping software was used. So I’m safe calling this NO HDR right? What is HDR anyway? I know, high dynamic range, I get that, but what does it mean with regard to how our images look? My guess, is many will look at this image and say it looks like HDR. Are you okay if I say, no HDR here? Or does it even matter? Is HDR a look? What the heck is it?

I’m inclined to respond to the HDR question the same way my dear departed friend Nancy would when asked if her image was digital or film, do you like it? Isn’t that all that matters? Does the process make any difference? I’m a fan using all the great tools we have to craft my images. I tend to follow my heart, and ultimately I like it or I don’t. Sometimes I can’t even remember what I did. How about you? I’m interested to know how you feel.

I have guest blog post up on the Nature Visions website. The images used are all from the Klotz Silk Mill which happened to be featured on the new “Abandoned” show on the Nat Geo channel. Have a look and while there, you might want to sign up for the weekend EXPO in November. I’ll be giving a new lecture along with a number of other great presenters.

Today’s blog image is from the Mill taken with the new Lensbaby Edge 80 optic. A really fun lens.

I went back to look at some images captured in the beginning of this year and stumbled upon this one. I’m preparing for two upcoming webinars. One for Topaz next week and the other for Nik at the end of the month. The preparation is always fun, forcing me to try new things and or find images that will work well for teaching.

For this image, I used Nik Color Efex to enhance the color version and then Silver Efex Pro for the b&w work. Back into color Efex for some finishing work, specifically the darken lighten center filter.